The main component of the Center for Tibetan Studies, the Tibetan Studies Library is a specialized research library whose holdings focus mainly on the religious field (Tibetan Buddhism and Bön) and the history of Tibet up to the modern period. They also cover fields such as architecture, archaeology, the study of Dunhuang documents and music.
The library holds some 10, ,000 volumes of books, of which two-thirds are in Tibetan, 86, titles of periodicals (of which around ten are current subscriptions), offprints, manuscripts, xylographs, archival documents, as well as online resources, including a selection of texts from the Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC) which can be consulted on site. The library also has access to collections compiled by researchers.
The collections are accessible via the Collège de France Omnia catalog. The most recent works, as well as a large part of the Tibetan collection, are also listed in Sudoc, the national catalog of higher education and research establishments. The Tibetan Studies Library was the first in the West to offer bi-lingual cataloguing in French and Tibetan, in 2010, in the Sudoc catalog.
A selection of the Tibetan Studies Library's precious holdings (manuscripts, xylographs, archival documents and periodicals) is gradually being digitized and put online on Salamandre, the digital heritage library and archive catalog of the Collège de France. Certain works are the subject of entries in Colligere, the research notebook of the Collège de France libraries and archives.
The Tibetan Studies Library also holds a substantial collection of the Tibet Mirror or Melong (Yul phyogs so so'i gsar 'gyur me long), a Tibetan-language news paper published in Kalimpong (India) from 1925 to 1963. Part of the collection was digitized in 2011 as part of an agreement withColumbia University (USA) to showcase this heritage. As part of a partnership with the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives (LTWA, India), all issues of Tibet Mirror in the possession of the LTWA or a French library (collections of the Bibliothèque d'études tibétaines of the Collège de France, the Société Asiatique and the Musée Guimet) have been scanned and presented in a database, available on Salamandre, the digital heritage library and archive catalog of the Collège de France.
The library offers 58 seats, including three carrels and two rooms for group work in a reading room shared by the five libraries of the Pôle Mondes asiatiques.
